


Ducks Stick Together

by SailorSol



Category: Mighty Ducks (Movies)
Genre: Fluff, Future Fic, Gen, Mentions of the rest of the team - Freeform, Rollerblades & Rollerskates, Slice of Life, Team, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-19
Updated: 2014-05-19
Packaged: 2018-01-25 19:03:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1659089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SailorSol/pseuds/SailorSol
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From Peewees to the Junior Goodwill games, high school and on, the Ducks stick together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ducks Stick Together

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first Mighty Ducks fic.... it's cutesy and fluffy and doesn't have much point, but I love the Ducks to itty bitty pieces, and I just couldn't resist. This is meant to be set sometime after they're all out of college.

He tugged his jersey over his head, the green mesh blocking out the world outside for a moment. He snapped the buckles on his rollerblades, grinning as he stood up with unwavering steadiness. It was hard to imagine a time when he hadn’t known how to skate, when the closest thing he’d found to freedom was an old trunk in a dirty alley.

The loud, sharp quack was distinct and familiar and he didn’t bother fighting the grin as Charlie, now several inches taller than Fulton, rolled to a stop. Charlie was grinning like a lunatic as he let the duck call fall loose around his neck. “Are you ready for this?”

“Are you kidding?” he replied. “Let’s do this.”

Charlie pushed back and spun in one fluid motion, and the two of them moved with long-practiced ease down the streets until they reached the apartment building. Fulton was half convinced they’d have to go inside and make it up three flights of stairs in their skates, but when Charlie started trumpeting their call half a block away, Averman burst through the doors.

“I’m coming, I’m coming! No need to get your feathers in a ruffle.”

“Putting on some weight there, eh, Averman?” Fulton asked, circling his friend. “Maybe you can borrow Goldberg’s jersey.”

“Hysterical,” Averman said, glaring at Fulton as he tugged the bottom of his jersey self-consciously. “Not all of us were giants already when we got these, y’know.”

“Lay off,” Charlie said impatiently. “We’re gonna be late!”

“We’re not going to be late,” Averman said, but the three of them started off down the road. “Besides, he’ll be expecting us to make an entrance.”

“He’s not expecting us at all,” Charlie argued. “How long has he been gone?”

“Long enough to start missing your ugly face,” Averman shot back. Fulton exchanged a high five with Averman behind Charlie’s back. “Really, he should know to expect us. We’re like fungus. Eventually we just grow on you.”

“I see some things haven’t changed,” Connie said as she joined their formation, behind and just to the right of Averman. Charlie spun so he was skating backwards, still leading them.

“I thought you said you were busy,” Charlie said, accusingly.

“I am,” Connie replied, grinning. “I’m a busy woman, Conway, and I can’t have you thinking I’ll drop everything for that duck call of yours anymore.”

Charlie took that as a signal to blast another quack at her. “Might wanna watch where you’re going,” Fulton said, watching Charlie spin again, nearly losing his balance. Everyone laughed at Charlie, who’d been in no danger of running into anything.

“No respect,” Charlie said in a long suffering tone.

“I thought that ‘C’ on your chest stood for ‘Charlie’,” Averman said, in his best Coach Orion voice.

Charlie ignored the dig in favor of starting up the duck call again. They were approaching the diner, and Fulton could see that Goldberg definitely wasn’t waiting outside for them. He let out a whoop of totally immature delight as the four of them invaded the diner.

“Goldberg!” Fulton, Connie, and Averman shouted at the same time, as Charlie kept blasting away on the duck call. The patrons were giving them dirty looks, but Fulton didn’t care.

“If you don’t stop that right now, I’m declaring it duck season!” Goldberg yelled over the quacking chant the four of them had taken up. But he came rolling out from behind the counter as he buckled the strap on his helmet, and joined in a few raucous quacks before they were outside again and had a full vee.

“This is it, then?” Goldberg asked, after a few blocks. Fulton’s smile faded a little. They hadn’t had the full team together since freshman year of high school, and that was years ago now. They all still kept in touch as much as possible, but while a few of them had stayed in the Twin Cities, not everyone had.

“Guy got stuck in Toronto for work,” Connie said. “He tried to get back in time, but there weren’t any flights.”

“Julie’s due to pop any day now, and Dwayne refuses to leave her side,” Averman said. “And Luis and Kenny are still somewhere in Europe making names for themselves.”

“Dean’s deployed,” Fulton supplied. He’d shocked the hell out of all of them when he’d enlisted after high school, but these days, Fulton couldn’t imagine his best friend being anything other than a Marine.

“And everyone else didn’t reply,” Charlie finished, coasting to a stop near the entrance to the mall. He turned to face them, looking suddenly like the ten year old kid who’d asked them all to believe in Coach Bombay after the mess with Coach Reilly. “I know this was asking a lot of you guys…”

“We’re Ducks, Charlie,” Connie said, crossing her arms. Her jersey definitely didn’t fit like it had when they’d been kids. “Ducks stick together.”

Charlie grinned in relief, but it was bittersweet, and Fulton felt it too. “Still, I wish the rest of the crew—”

“You aren’t about to go in there without us, are you?” a voice said, cutting Charlie off. The five of them turned to face two more people in Ducks jerseys.

“Jesse?” Charlie asked, and it took Fulton a minute to realize, yeah, that was the only person it could be.

“Found him at the airport,” Guy said, accepting the punch in the arm from his wife. “I managed to sweet talk my way into a red-eye. It’s not every day we get to have a Ducks reunion.”

“I didn’t even have your phone number,” Charlie said to Jesse, tackling the other man in a hug that almost knocked them both off their feet. “How’d you find out?”

“I’ve got my ways,” Jesse said. “And it’s not like I live on the other side of the country.”

“Just the other side of the river,” Goldberg said.

Fulton felt happier than he could have imagined; so maybe it wasn’t the whole team, but this was the most of the original team that had been together since Peewees.

“Oh, shit!” Charlie said. “We’re going to be late!”

“Where’ve I heard that one before?” Averman asked, rolling his eyes towards the sky, but the group of seven headed inside.

They were drawing stares—of course they were drawing stares, a bunch of adults skating through the mall with the reckless abandon of teenagers—but none of them cared. It was a race, now, to see who could get to the center of the mall first, and with all the other people headed in that general direction it was just another thrill.

Fulton could hear the muffled sound of voices coming through a PA, the words distorted by the acoustics of the shopping center, and whatever last shreds of decorum they might have had went out the window. Charlie was putting all of his spare breath into blowing the duck call as they formed up again, Charlie at the front, Guy and Averman flanking him, Fulton and Jesse behind them, with Connie and Goldberg fanned all the way out at the back. The noise from the crowd ahead started to die down and heads started turning and Fulton’s cheeks were hurting as he grinned at the scene they were making.

The security guards tried to stop them, but the guards were old and out of shape and they had the advantage of speed and years of training at avoiding people crashing into them, even if it had been nearly as many years for some of them since they’d practiced. And then they were on the stage, circling their suited target.

His cheeks were flushed pink, and Fulton knew the expression was a mix between supreme embarrassment and an attempt to not laugh. Fulton grabbed one arm and Averman the other, just as they’d planned, and before there was a chance for a struggle, the green jersey Charlie’d had bundled up was tugged down.

The crowd hadn’t started making noise yet, shocked by the display, but Charlie finally stopped the duck calls just in time for one of the guards to make an attempt to clamber onto the stage. “You lot can’t be up there!”

As one, they all turned to look at the guard, who hesitated; it was enough to make Fulton start laughing again, remembering the long distant speech about ducks never getting in fights.

“What the hell, Charlie?”

Charlie beamed, and it didn’t matter that fifteen years had passed since they’d become a team, he would always be their captain. “Once a Duck, always a Duck,” Charlie declared, wrapping an arm around a shoulder.

And that’s when the crowd exploded in noise again, cameras flashing and reporters screaming, until finally the man they’d come seeking worked his arms into the sleeves of his jersey and held them up to stop the questions, giving Charlie an exasperated look.

“I should have expected something like this.”

“Well, what did you expect, Cake Eater?” Jesse asked, punching Adam in the shoulder. “It’s like Charlie said.”

Adam still looked exasperated, but he was grinning now too, and then laughing as Charlie’s hand came down in the middle with a single word. “Quack.”

The others didn’t hesitate, and none of them cared who was watching, because they were all here together, and Adam had just been drafted to the Anaheim Ducks, and somewhere out there Coach Reilly had to be having a heart attack as they all picked up the chant. The crowd caught on moments later, the energy building the way it had during the Goodwill Games, and when the sound reached a cacophony, Charlie nudged Adam.

Adam’s face split into an enormous grin as he started the end of their chant. Fulton joined the others, sharing in the triumph of their friend and teammate, of one of their own proudly wearing the emblem of the Duck once again.

“Gooooooooo Ducks!”


End file.
